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AN OPEN LETTER 



AN 
OPEN LETTER 

TO HIS EMINENCE 

Cattitnal (§Mom 

APROPOS OF 

HIS INTERVIEW ON THE SEPARATION 

OF CHURCH AND STATE 

IN FRANCE 

\\ 

TRANSLATED 
BY JOHN RICHARD SLATTERY 




BOSTON 

1908 



(d 






Copyright, 1908 
Sherman, French cf Company 



two 0> nies Keceiveci 

APH 25 1908 

I SUHY A/ 



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CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Note of Translator 3 

To THE Reader 5 

Preface to the Second Edition 15 

Interview of Cardinal Gibbons 17 

Open Letter 31 

Notes of the Author ^ . . 75 



NOTE 

Upon reading the first edition of M. Sabatier's 
" Open Letter," the translator felt that in an 
English dress it would impart a fair idea of the 
status between France and Rome, and with the 
courteous approval of the author he attempted it. 
In regard to church properties, the reader should 
bear in mind that much of the property confis- 
cated at the Revolution was sold to parties whose 
heirs are to-day staunch Ultramontaines and 
just as staunch retainers of their inherited estates. 

One word more: It appears to the translator 
that no more importance need be attached to the 
interviews, statements, addresses of the Catholic 
hierarchy, at home or abroad, than is given to the 
platform speeches of politicians. Both the one 
and the other are inspired from above and have 
the same aim. Cicero pro domo sua. 

Lastly, it seems only fair to print the inter- 
views of Cardinal Gibbons, and it is here given 
as it appeared in the Baltimore " Sun," December 
14th, 1906. 

The footnotes of the author are put together 
at the end. They offer very instructive reading, 
even apart from the text. 

J. R. S. 



TO THE READER 

About January 7th, 1907, all the political press 
published long extracts from an interview of His 
Eminence, Cardinal Gibbons, on French affairs. 
Thinking that the thoughts of this well-known 
prelate might have been misunderstood or mis- 
translated, I wrote him asking for the exact text 
of his words. In answer he was kind enough to 
send me the Baltimore " Sun " of Friday, Decem- 
ber 14th, 1906. 

Upon the receipt of this authentic text, about 
the middle of February, 1907, the following pages 
were written. At first they were not intended for 
the public eye, but as interviews, evidently inspired 
by the Cardinal's, have since been given through- 
out America, it seemed useful to print this letter. 

Facts — facts indeed easily verifiable — will be 
found herein. On every side it is evident that 
those who call upon the French government to 
stop the religious persecution have read neither 
the Concordat nor the text of the new law and only 
from afar followed events in France. But why 
hesitate, when a Cardinal sketches dramatically 
the abominable tyranny flourishing among us? 

Unhappily, the Archbishop of Baltimore him- 
self seems to have been led rather by impressions 
than by a calm, serene study of the facts and the 
documents. 

His interview is given on the first page of the 
newspaper, preceded by long brackets, within 



6 AN OPEN LETTER 

which, after the opening Cardinal Speaks, are 
arranged in capitals, big and little, the following 
headlines : 

DECLARES FRENCH GOVERNMENT IS AC- 
TUATED BY HATRED OF RELIGION. 



CHURCH IS DESPOILED." 



SEPARATION AS UNDERSTOOD IN THIS 
COUNTRY NOT THE ISSUE. 



LOOKS FOR PEOPLE TO RISE. 



ACCEPTANCE BY THE CHURCH OF THE 
PRESENT LAW, HE DECLARES, WOULD 
MEAN THE VERY LIKELY PROSPECT 
OF GRADUAL EXTINCTION BY DUE 
PROCESS OF LAW. 



Then comes a kind of resume, which is here 
given in full: 

SOME OF CARDINAL'S POINTS. 

I. " I am weighing my words, and I say with 
deliberate conviction that the leaders of the pres- 
ent French Government are actuated by nothing 
less than hatred of religion. 



TO THE READER 7 

II. " Perhaps the feature of the situation that 
will surprise us most and call for our just indigna- 
tion as Americans is the French Government's ab- 
solute disregard for the property rights of the 
church. She has been despoiled of the salaries 
granted to the ministers of religion as a compen- 
sation for the funds which the church relinquished 
under that express condition. 

III. " In addition, the law of separation entirely 
ignores the constitution and laws of the church, 
a situation which has no parallel in our American 
method of keeping Church and State separate. 

IV. " Should the church accept the present law 
she has before her the very likely prospect of grad- 
ual extinction by due process of law. 

V. " If the separation of Church and State in 
France meant just what it means in the United 
States there would have been no such hue and cry 
raised against it. 

VI. " I have too much confidence in the French 
nation * * * ^q believe that it will not rise 
and reject the leaders who are seeking to destroy 
religion and bringing disgrace upon the name of 
France." 

The paragraphs I number in order to tally there- 
with my answers in the pages following: 

I, To prove hatred of religion, the Cardinal 
gives not one fact. He merely alleges words of 
MM. Briand, Jaures, and Viviani. The echo which 
the words of M. Viviani, cited by him, brought 
suffice to show how extraordinary they are. 

Those of M. Jaures in their original form are un- 
attackable orthodoxy and perhaps it would not be 
impossible to find similar expressions in St. 
Thomas. Last November (1906) a Roman prelate 



8 AX OPEN LETTER 

read at a social gathering a page of a speech, just 
delivered by M. Jaures,, and drew tears of religious 
emotion from many of his hearers. 

As to the words which Cardinal Gibbons im- 
putes to M. Briand, they were never uttered, 

IL This is a mistake. The ministers of wor- 
ship drew salaries as State officials. There is not 
a single word in the Concordat that offers these 
salaries as a sort of compensation in return for 
the property confiscated at the Revolution. 

III. Another mistake. The Law, being, as it 
should be, the same for all the denominations, 
could not enter into the details of any particular 
organization. But 'Si. Briand declared in the 
tribune of Parliament that §4 implies, so far as 
Catholic worship is concerned, canonical com- 
munion of the priest with the bishop ; of the 
bishop with the Pope. 

lY. How can this be accepted, when it is 
known that the great majority of the French epis- 
copate petitioned the Pope to give a loyal trial 
to the new law? 

V. Let American Catholics who boast so highly 
of their separation read simply the Bull Vehementer. 
Therein they will see that separation is absolutely 
condemned. If then the Holy See supports it in 
America, it is a toleration entirely forced upon 
it and merely provisional. Pius X, who after 
having solemnly consulted the French episcopate, 
paid no heed to their answers, might also some 
day, when his thoughts shall wander beyond the 



TO THE READER 9 

ocean, take it into his head to force the same pure 
and healthy doctrine in America. 

New Orleans, April 23. — Cardinal Gibbons, 
replying to a statement by Paul Sabatier, in which 
M. Sabatier speaks of the Cardinal as being " so 
proud of the separation between Church and State 
in America " and recommends him to read the 
Papal bulletins " which absolutely condemned it," 
gave out the following interview to-day : 

" In arguing for separation of Church and State, 
I do not presume to speak for other countries, or 
for other conditions. I speak only for my own 
country and its conditions, although I may venture 
the opinion that, whatever the opinion of the 
French Episcopate may be with regard to separa- 
tion of Church and State, it would be better for 
that country if they could enjoy the real separation 
of Church and State as it is in this country. 

" I am, therefore, unalterably attached to the 
separation of Church and State in this country, 
and have always expressed my belief and satisfac- 
tion in it. I so expressed myself in its favor thirty 
years ago, I did so later on in Rome itself, and I 
have no hesitation in expressing the same solemn 
belief to-day. 

" Indeed, I cannot speak too highly of the pres- 
ent relations between Church and State here, 
where the Civil Government holds over us the arm 
of its protection, without interfering with our 
rights of conscience in proclaiming the truths of 
the Gospel." 

Cardinal Gibbons is in New Orleans to partici- 
pate in the bestowing of the pallium upon Arch- 
bishop Blenck to-morrow. — New York Freeman's 
Journal, April 27th, 1907. 

VI. No, France will not rise against her gov- 



10 AN OPEN LETTER 

ernment for the excellent reason that it is the 
expression of her own will. If she believes it not 
perfect, still she judges it is perfectible and in her 
eyes that is the main point. She did not believe 
that a coup d'etat was in sight because M. Viviani 
indulged in a little rhetorical blasphemy. And 
when she witnesses acts of reparation for those 
blasphemous words, she asks herself why priests, 
bishops, and cardinals had not similar ceremonies, 
when a King, Louis XV, the anointed of the 
Lord, for whom therefore the church stood 
sponsor, was guilty of singularly more regrettable 
bad conduct. 

No, France will not put aside the ecclesiastical 
policy of M. Briand, because she is proud of that 
man, who every time he spoke, threw fresh light 
on those difficult and delicate questions, and leav- 
ing the impression not of a tyrant, who issues a 
command that no one has the right to discuss or 
even examine, but rather of a guide, a fellow- 
worker, opening up to ourselves our nobler part. 
We are grateful for his independence in the face of 
Rome and we are the more thankful to him be- 
cause be flatters no passion, begs no support, and 
because his politics flow from a plain, clear view 
of things. 

^ 4: ^ 4: ^ H^ 

It will seem strange, no doubt, for me to speak 
of Catholics with so much interest that it might 
be thought I am a member of the Roman Church. 
Many Protestants and free-thinkers will be scan- 
dalized. They will see a contradiction and per- 



TO THE READER 11 

haps among themselves will call me a traitor. 
Many Catholics, on the other hand, will answer 
roughly that I have no right to busy myself with 
the doings of a church, upon whose registers I am 
not inscribed. 

Nevertheless, I will not hesitate the less in my 
position, which desires nothing, affects nothing and 
with, as I hope, an acknowledged disinterestedness. 
The heart has its own motives for loving that the 
reason knows not. 

I began by loving the church without knowing 
too well why, perhaps the best way to love. I love 
her as one loves his mother and country. Were 
I disposed to seek some of the reasons for this mys- 
terious tie, one of the first would be, without 
doubt, the longing for the unity of the church. 
True, it has brought her to commit many blun- 
ders and many crimes; but the dream of oneness, 
of unity, summed up so well in the word catholic, 
does it not form the prophetic program of the so- 
ciety which we wish to develop and towards which, 
by various ways but with equal devotedness, the 
working and intellectual classes of the nineteenth 
century journeyed? 

To-day more than ever do I love her, in so much 
as now she is a prey to a formidable crisis. Here 
I refer not to external and political storms, like 
Separation, but of interior and profound troubles. 
She is almost in the same moral status as was the 
Synagogue half a century before Christ. She has 
her sanhedrin, her scribes, her doctors, and her 
Pharisees — a whole mass of officials and clients — 

2 



12 AN OPEN LETTER 

who see only the outside of the structure. They 
know the letter and hold that what was good 
enough for so many ages, should still suffice. But, 
alongside of those elements, at once venerable and 
out of place, shunning life as a temptation and a 
snare, weeping over the rags and tatters of a sys- 
tem that cannot be restored, somewhat like those 
bands of Polish Jews who go to weep beside the 
ruins of Jerusalem, I behold other ancients who, 
like Simeon, scan the horizon from the outlooks 
of the Temple, ready to pick out from the crowd 
the future Messiah, who comes not to destroy but 
to fulfil the past and who will see in to-day's re- 
ligion not an error but a laborious attempt well 
meant, if unfortunate, towards the Truth. 

There are not two Catholic churches ; there is 
but one, the true, which is nothing else than hu- 
manity, entering little by little into the conscious- 
ness of its mission and longing to establish justice. 
But there are two kinds of Catholics, the dead, 
materialistic, clerical Catholics — and the living 
Catholics. 

Why, if distinguishing these two large ten- 
dencies, should I not point them out? Why refuse 
our sympathy, our respect, our admiration for 
those Catholics of good will, more numerous than 
is supposed, who thoroughly anxious to remain 
loyal children of the church, forget not that above 
the Pope stands the Credo; above the Credo, the 
Gospels and above the Gospels the Individual Con- 
science; that man is not made for the church, but 
the church for man; that her mission is not to fill 



TO THE READER 13 

him with sighs and make his days upon earth a 
sort of exile, but rather to fit him for duties, for- 
ever new, and burdens ever more glorious? Such 
suffer a severe trial, but as one of them has well 
said : " The tempest scatters more seed throughout 
the world than it uproots trees." 

But what must be thought of their opponents, 
those Catholics who cry out for liberty with so 
much violence at the very moment when, in order 
to down their brethren, they have recourse only to 
intimidations and pressure. 

Ideas are not killed with the blows of a stick. 
The day, too, is gone when history can be made 
out of falsehoods. Let the splendid unity of views 
on the part of the French episcopate be held up 
before us as much as any one pleases, it will de- 
ceive neither Pius X, who had all the documents 
under his eyes, nor the bishops, who will scarcely 
forget the painful discussions brought on by the 
clash of two opposing views, nor the public above 
all, which smiles quietly and asks itself why so 
much mystery if there is nothing to hide. 

The French crisis is much more imposing and 
tragic than is gathered from reading the burning 
words of Cardinal Gibbons or the Encyclicals of 
Pius X. These leaders see only the shell, political 
and ecclesiastical. They seem not to grasp its 
huge religious import. Is it this ye are gazing 
at? might Jesus repeat. 

It is not the process of the French government, 
which unveils itself before our eyes ; rather do we 
witness the manifestation of a certain idea of re- 



14 AN OPEN LETTER 

ligious authority. Ecclesiastical authority, should 
it or could it refrain from entering into all the 
magnificent palaces which come across its path, 
where men, well meaning now and then but with 
little sense and more often interested, beg it to take 
up its abode? 

To all those parties who ask of it a political 
dogma, a social dogma and even perhaps a literary 
or artistic dogma ; to all such faithful as demand 
miracles, should it not answer by exhorting to un- 
ceasing labor. "Seek and ye shall find." 

Is not Pius X in danger of forgetting that Jesus 
Himself was tempted, and that his real enemies 
are not they who persecute but those who come 
to him with marks of respect and reverence. " If 
thou art the Vicar of God, show thy power. Is it 
not written that the gates of Hell shall not pre- 
vail against thee ? " 

Behold the real crisis. 

Assisi, Holy Thursday, 1907. 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 

Hardly had the first edition of this work been 
out, than the base as well as the details of my argu- 
ment were found confirmed to the letter by the 
publication of the Montaguine papers. 

Whoever has studied these documents has seen 
that the great majority of the French Episcopate 
favored a loyal trial of the law of separation and 
they labored strongly but uselessly to restrain the 
Holy See to a Tolerari posse. 

It is evident that at the very moment the Holy 
See condemned the law under the pretext that it 
would give to the laity a high hand over the 
church, its own stand was inspired by laymen like 
MM. Piou, Grosseau, Costa and others known 
only to France by their hatred for democratic 
ideas. 

Up to the present. His Eminence, Cardinal Gib- 
bons, has not answered me. But others have 
spoken, while the Osservatore Romano, la Civilta 
Cattolica, la Riscossa de Breganza, to mention only 
official or quasi-official journals, took me in hand. 
I received sympathetic messages from priests, 
whom I knew not even by sight perhaps, but in 
whose hearts it is an infinite honor for me to find 
no matter how small a corner. I shall add noth- 
ing on so many pages, burning, sad and soul-stir- 
ring, which I have read and re-read with heartfelt 
emotion. 

16 



16 AN OPEN LETTER 

Let all those unknown friends accept the ex- 
pression of my thanks. Why should I not send it? 
It goes forth with special sympathy and admiration 
for the isolated ones of the Abruzzi, of the Basili- 
cata, of Provence and Du Berry.* 

" He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing 
precious seed, shall doubtless come again with re- 
joicing, bringing his sheaves with him." Ps. 126. 
If it suits the Ecclesiastical authority to ignore the 
crises through which Italian and French Catholi- 
cism in particular is passing and to persuade itself 
that peace reigns in the church and in consciences, 
it is not we who can lead it to a change of views. 

The main point is that no heart bows to its 
troubles and despair takes hold of no soul. If for 
many months, every day brought a fresh stroke of 
authority, every day also heard the echo of a new 
voice calling out with unconquerable firmness a re- 
ligious truth, which would prove a spiritual food 
easy to take in a Vatican, as it were, for our 
generation. 

Following hard after the priests, whose mouths 
were to be closed, rise up the laity, whose pen can- 
not be broken. The methods taken to stop the 
Rinnovamento of Milan, and the sober answer of 
its young editors to H. E., the Cardinal, Arch- 
bishop of Milan, mark a red-letter day in the 
history of the Church. 

Assisi, May 30th, 1907. 



* Ancient Provence comprised the present departments of Bouches- 
du-Rhone, Var, Vancluse. Du Berry, whose capital was Bourges, is 
DOW the department of Char. 



INTERVIEW OF CARDINAL GIBBONS 

AS PRINTED IN THE " BALTIMORE SUN " 
OF DECEMBER 14, 1906 



17 



CARDINAL SPEAKS 



DECLARES FRENCH GOVERNMENT IS AC- 
TUATED BY HATRED OF RELIGION. 



CHURCH IS DESPOILED." 



SEPARATION AS UNDERSTOOD IN THIS 
COUNTRY NOT THE ISSUE. 



LOOKS FOR PEOPLE TO RISE. 



ACCEPTANCE BY THE CHURCH OF THE 
PRESENT LAW, HE DECLARES, WOULD 
MEAN THE VERY LIKELY PROSPECT 
OF GRADUAL EXTINCTION BY DUE 
PROCESS OF LAW. 



SOME OF CARDINAL'S POINTS. 

" I am weighing my words and I say with de- 
liberate conviction that the leaders of the pres- 
ent French Government are actuated by nothing 
less than hatred of religion. 

" Perhaps the feature of the situation that will 
surprise us most and call for our just indignation 
as Amercans is the French Government's absolute 

19 



20 AN OPEN LETTER 

disregard for the property rights of the church. 
She has been despoiled of the salaries granted 
to the ministers of religion as a compensation for 
the funds which the church relinquished under 
that express condition. 

" In addition, the law of separation entirely 
ignores the constitution and laws of the church — 
a situation which has no parallel in our American 
method of keeping church and state separate. 

'' Should the church accept the present law she 
has before her the very likely prospect of gradual 
extinction by due process of law. 

'' If the separation of church and state in France 
meant just what it means in the United States 
there would have been no such hue and cry raised 
against it. 

" I have too much confidence in the French na- 
tion * * * to believe that it will not rise and 
reject the leaders who are seeking to destroy re- 
ligion and bringing disgrace upon the name of 
France." 



*' The American public does not understand the 
present crisis in France," said Cardinal Gibbons 
when asked last evening for his opinion on the 
French situation. 

" I am getting to be an old man now and I think 
I know my countrymen. They love fair play ; they 
love liberty; they love to see humane dealings c^. 
man with man. And the late years have shql^i^ 
how cordially they hate injustice, tyranny aiii^ 
inhumanity. " • 

" And yet France has treated her noblest citizens 
with injustice and inhumanity, and America, which 
has sympathy for the oppressed of all nations, has 
raised no protest nor uttered a word of sympathy. 

'* If I believed that my countrymen would know- 
ingly see a great and beneficent organization un- 



THE CARDINAL'S INTERVIEW 21 

justly deprived of its property and the means of 
continued usefulness ; would knowingly see tens of 
thousands of honest men and noble women robbed 
of their just income and means of support; would 
knowingly see hundreds of thousands and even 
several millions of people brutally wounded in 
what they hold dearest and most sacred ; would 
knowingly see a majority in the chambers utterly 
disregard and trample upon the rights of the mi- 
nority and the rights of millions of their country- 
men — in the name of liberty ; would knowingly see 
tens of thousands of men and women — who happen 
to be priests and nuns — turned out of their homes 
for no crime but that of loving God and serving 
their neighbor — I say if my countrymen can see 
and recognize all this injustice and tyranny and 
cruelty and refuse genuine sympathy to those who 
suffer by them because of their religious belief, 
then I will leave life without that faith in American 
love of justice and liberty and humanity which has 
been my comfort and support and hope during a 
long career. 

HATRED OF RELIGION. 

" But the American people have not had these 
things put fairly before them. Our own press has 
been to a considerable extent the reflex of the 
Parisian anti-clerical press. Most people over here 
have little conception of the French anti-clericals. 
They look on the leaders of this party as enlight- 
ened statesmen seeking to preserve the republic 
from the attacks' of an aggressive clergy. 

" There have been honest and sincere lovers of 
republican government ^a^nong anti-clericals I ad- 
mit, but the majority of them have far less love 
of the republic than they have hatred of religion. 

" I am weighing my words, and I say with de- 
liberate conviction that the leaders of the present 



22 AN OPEN LETTER 

French Government are actuated by nothing less 
than hatred of religion. 

" We have no spirit akin to theirs in this coun- 
try. We have here much indifference to religion, 
but we have no body of men, no great party that 
makes it a chief aim to weaken the power of re- 
ligion and if possible utterly to destroy it out of 
the land. 

JACOBIN PARTY STILL LIVES. 

" But in France the Jacobin party is not dead. 
Their spirit is as living to-day as it was in the 
last decade of the eighteenth century; they hate 
God, they hate Christ, they hate His religion as 
much as ever their fathers hated them. 

" But they have learned a more prudent and 
measured method of attack. They are almost 
scientific in the means they take to suppress Chris- 
tianity. And yet the utterances of such men are 
received as unsuspectingly by many Americans as 
would be a discourse by Mr. Cleveland or Mr. 
Roosevelt or Mr. Taft — men who recognize the 
powerful influence that religion has in promoting 
the welfare of society. 

" It is easy to show that I am not misrepresent- 
ing the spirit of anti-clericals. They make no 
secret of their hatred of Christianity. They avow 
it in the press and in the chambers. 

" Let me give you a few examples of the lan- 
guage of these men and you can judge if the Amer- 
ican people have ever heard anything similar from 
their own leaders, or if any American statesmen 
would dare to utter such statements. 

QUOTES SOCIALIST LEADERS. 

" In the course of a long speech in the Chamber 
of Deputies the well-known Socialist leader, 
Jaures, said: 

" ' If God himself appeared before the multitudes 



THE CARDINAL'S INTERVIEW 23 

in palpable form, the first duty of man would be 
to refuse Him obedience and to consider Him not 
as a master to whom men should submit, but as 
an equal with whom men may argue.' 

" M. Viviani, the new Minister of Labor, speak- 
ing also in the Chamber of Deputies, gave utter- 
ance to these sentiments : 

" * All of us together, first by our forefathers, 
then by our fathers, now by ourselves, have been 
attached to the work of anti-clericalism and irre- 
ligion. We have snatched the human conscience 
from belief in a future life. * * * j)q you 
think that the work is at an end? No, it is but 
beginning.' 

" The Chamber decreed that the discourse from 
which this extract is taken should be placarded in 
every town and village of France. 

" In the same strain the present Minister of Pub- 
lic Worship and the most strenuous advocate of 
the law of separation, M. Briand, said in an ad- 
dress to school teachers : 

" ' The time has come to root up from the minds 
of French children the ancient faith which has 
served its purpose and replace it with the light of 
free thought; it is time to get rid of the Christian 
idea. We have hunted Jesus Christ out of the 
army, the navy, the schools, the hospitals, insane 
and orphan asylums and law courts, and now we 
must hunt him out of the State altogether.' 

" What would we Americans say if a Cabinet 
officer were to propose this as the great aim of his 
administration ? 

SWEET WORDS; BLOODY DEEDS. 

" For some reason the sentiments of the anti- 
clericals are not reproduced by our papers. But 
let a French statesman utter counsels of modera- 
tion and sentiments of liberty, when he wishes to 
check his followers and prevent them from foiling 



24 AN OPEN LETTER 

his plans by too great haste and zeal, then his fair 
words are spread before the eyes of our people. 
They are taken as the expression of wisdom and 
fair play. 

" For a spinner of beautiful discourses, breath- 
ing humanity and justice, the French demigod can- 
not be surpassed. 

*' It is a common observation of historians that 
in the most bloody seasons of the French Revolu- 
tion the air was full of sweet words about fra- 
ternity and liberty, coming from the very men 
Avho made the streets run with blood. These 
men and those who inherit their spirit can talk 
more divinely and act more diabolically than any 
other on earth. They do not, of course, want 
bloodshed now, but the spirit of hatred exists in 
them just as strongly. 

CONFISCATION AT REVOLUTION. 

" In order to understand the present situation 
it must be borne in mind that before the French 
Revolution all churches, all ecclesiastical lands 
and properties belonged to the church by as just 
a title as property is owned in our own country 
by the Catholic, Methodist or any other religious 
denomination. 

" At the Revolution all buildings, landed prop- 
erties, funds, etc., were confiscated by the revo- 
lutionists. But the injustice of this was soon rec- 
ognized, and the Constituent Assembly publicly 
and solemnly pledged itself to render some sort of 
justice to the church by giving for the support of 
the clergy and the maintenance of worship an 
annual budget. This amounted to a little more 
than 1 per cent, on the values appropriated by the 
State. 

" Let it be remembered, too, that this act of 
quasi-justice took place 12 years before the Con- 
cordat between the Holy See and Napoleon I. 



THE CARDINAL'S INTERVIEW 25 

The payment, therefore, of the clerical stipends 
was not dependent simply upon a Concordat, but 
was a recognition of a just debt owed by the State 
to the church for appropriating funds which had 
been producing a revenue for the support of the 
clergy and the maintenance of worship. 

BACK TO 1880. 

'* The present conflict dates back to the year 
1880, when a large number of religious houses 
were closed by order of the Government and their 
occupants dispersed and forced to seek religious 
liberty in the land of the stranger. 

" From that time scarcely a year has passed 
without some annoyance to the church — a series 
of petty acts of discrimination that were bound 
in the long run to call for a protest. The protest 
came in the form of a personal letter from Pope 
Leo XIII to President Grevy, in May, 1883, which 
was answered courteously enough indeed, but the 
answer was a mere waste of time and paper so 
far as results were concerned. 

" In spite of the Pontiff's reasonable objections 
the injurious laws were passed. As far as possible 
God and religion were banished from the schools 
and hospitals, the oath deprived of its religious 
character and clerics impressed into the military 
service. 

LAW OF ASSOCIATIONS. 

" Next, in 1901, the law of associations was 
passed — a law which, as interpreted and executed 
by Combes, caused untold misery to thousands. 

" By it the schools in charge of religious associa- 
tions were forced out of existence. The members 
of the different religious congregations, not only 
male, but female as well, were sent forth, cast out 
upon the world and obliged either to eke out an ex- 
istence as best they could in their own native 



26 AN OPEN LETTER 

France or to go into exile. Many of these were old 
men or old women who had spent a lifetime within 
the convent walls, and were now driven out, no 
longer able to begin a new career and with no 
means of support. 

CONCORDAT DISSOLVED. 

" Finally, in December, 1905, the Concordat was 
dissolved and separation of Church and State 
proclaimed. 

" It is essential to bear in mind that the Con- 
cordat was a genuine contract, and that this con- 
tract was annulled by one of the parties, the 
French Government, with no regard to the wishes 
of the other party. The Sovereign Pontiff was in 
no wise consulted, and utterly ignored in every 
stage of the proceedings. 

"THE CHURCH DESPOILED." 

" Perhaps the feature of the situation that will 
surprise us most and call for our just indignation 
as Americans is the French Government's abso- 
lute disregard for the property rights of the 
church. She has been despoiled of the salaries 
granted to the ministers of religion as a compen- 
sation for the funds which the church relinquished 
under that express condition. 

" We say it not in the heat of passion, not as 
partisans, but simply as lovers of justice. 

" What should we think if our own Government 
had seized on the friars' lands in the Philippines 
without giving any compensation, or after having 
pledged solemnly a compensation should afterward 
refuse to keep its part of the contract? 

" Furthermore, suppose the American Govern- 
ment had left to the Filipinos merely the use, and 
not the ownership, of their churches, and only 
under conditions laid down by itself, and even that 
their very use was liable to be revoked at any 
time. 



THE CARDINAL'S INTERVIEW 27 

" WITHOUT PARALLEL." 

" In addition, the provisions of the new law 
(law of separation) entirely ignore the constitu- 
tion and laws of the church — a situation that has 
no parallel in our American method of keeping 
Church and State separate. Here there is due rec- 
ognition of the laws governing every lawful so- 
ciety, while under the recent French law provisions 
are made for organizing Catholic worship without 
any proper reference to the duly authorized 
officers of the church — the bishops and priests. 

PROSPECT OF EXTINCTION. 

" This is the point to which the Holy Father 
has objected most strenuously. The provision for 
associations of worship (associations cultuelles) 
opens the way for schmismatical organizations, 
which have, in fact, in a few cases, been already 
attempted. It places the church at the mercy of 
the judgment of the Council of State, whose de- 
cision in these matters is final. 

" Should the church accept the present law, she 
has before her the very likely prospect of gradual 
extinction by due process of law. She has learned 
by long and sad experience to place no trust in 
the promises of the French Government. She 
knows the spirit that animates it. 

^* She remembers that M. Waldeck-Rousseau 
was ready enough to interpret liberally the law of 
associations; but his successor, M. Combes, 
showed himself by no means willing to follow in 
his footsteps. The law of separation, if accepted, 
will inevitably lead to the destruction of religious 
liberty, just as the law of associations led to the 
destruction of religious congregations. 

SITUATION IS DIFFERENT. 

" If the separation of Church and State in France 
meant just what it means in the United States, 
s 



28 AN OPEN LETTER 

there would have been no such hue and cry raised 
against it. Very likely to many it would have been 
by no means undesirable. 

" But the situations are not at all analogous. 
In proof of this we have only to point to the fact 
that on several occasions some of the leading 
French Catholic Deputies bluntly put the question : 
' Why do you not give us separation of Church and 
State such as exists in America?' 

AS PRIEST SEES IT. 

" The real nature of the separation has been well 
expressed in these words of a French priest : 

" ' The Concordat might be compared to a con- 
jugal union in which the state represented the 
husband, the church the wife. To-day they are 
separated, but the separation has simply consisted 
in the husband banishing the wife from her home, 
keeping all the fortune for himself and preventing 
her from acquiring any other by managing him- 
self the little income which he allows her to gain, 
and likewise in exercising a jealous watch over all 
her words and actions.' 

GUISE OF TYRANNY. 

" It is not separation alone, therefore, that the 
Holy Father is repudiating, but tyranny in the 
guise of separation. Hence it was imperative upon 
him to resist. 

" For the last 20 years and more the policy of 
the Holy See and the French hierarchy has been 
one of patience and conciliation. It was with the 
deepest regret, only after all his conciliatory 
measures had failed, that the Pontiff at length 
found himself driven to a course of passive 
resistance. 

" In choosing this course the Holy Father did 
not run counter to the opinion and wishes of the 
French Episcopate. A canvass of the situation 



THE CARDINAL'S INTERVIEW 29 

has shown that the vast majority of the bishops 
were with him, and all, without a single exception, 
have accepted and obeyed his decisions. 

" Nor were the French clergy at all behind their 
leaders in manifesting their loyalty. Last summer 
at the gatherings of the clergy in almost every dio- 
cese resolutions were taken to be forwarded to the 
Sovereign Pontiff expressive of their gratitude and 
loyalty. 

SYMPATHY OUTSIDE FRANCE. 

" This feeling has not been by any means con- 
fined to France. The bishops of England, Canada, 
Italy and other countries are in full sympathy with 
their brethren in France and have not hesitated to 
give strong expression to their disapproval of the 
unjust law. 

" In our own country on the occasion of the cen- 
tenary of the Baltimore Cathedral a message of 
encouragement and sympathy was forwarded to 
the French hierarchy in the name of the bishops 
of the United States. In this we expressed the 
hope that the Catholics of France might soon enjoy 
the religious freedom accorded their brethren on 
this side of the ocean. 

EXPECTS RENEWAL OF FAITH. 

" For myself I have too much confidence in the 
good of the French clergy, in their high-minded- 
ness, their zeal, their courage, their readiness to 
suffer and to sacrifice themselves, to believe that 
they will tamely allow religion to be strangled in 
France, and I have too much confidence in the 
French nation to believe, now that they can see 
and realize the meaning of the measures taken and 
the animus of those behind them, that the natural 
feelings of justice and humanity and the love of 
liberty will not arise in their hearts and lead them 
to reject the leaders, who, in seeking to destroy 



30 AN OPEN LETTER 

religion, are bringing disgrace upon the name of 
France. And I have too much confidence in God 
and his protection of the church not to feel en- 
couraged to look for a renewal of faith and religion 
in France. 

" The view of the case as I have given it is based 
on the facts and the documents ; we need only 
leave it to an impartial and liberty-loving people to 
decide which party is responsible for the present 
miserable conflict." 



AN OPEN LETTER TO HIS EML 

NENCE, CARDINAL GIBBONS, 

ARCHBISHOP OF BALTIMORE 



31 



AN OPEN LETTER TO HIS EMINENCE, 

CARDINAL GIBBONS, ARCHBISHOP 

OF BALTIMORE. 

Your Eminence: 

Kindly allow me to express to you with respect- 
ful simplemindedness all the sorrow I felt upon 
reading your appeal to American public opinion 
apropos of the separation of Church and State in 
France. 

Of course, it appears not out of place to see the 
Catholics of the entire world taken up with our 
country and following very anxiously the steps in 
a crisis, which every day seems more novel and 
serious. Hence, when, on May 1st, 1906, Your 
Eminence, in the name of the American Episco- 
pate, wrote to Cardinal Richard, expressing sym- 
pathy, esteem and best wishes, no one among us, 
as far as I know, raised his voice to criticise that 
mark of affection. And yet, your letter was not 
only severe upon our Government, but it showed 
that its author — in speaking of official Atheism — 
was greatly deceived, as much in regard to the 
spirit and letter of the new law as also in regard 
to the mind of our parliamentary majority. 

Now, in your latest ringing interview, you no 
longer seem to body forth your sympathy with the 
church of France, but rather to stir up against 
French Government and Parliament opinion in the 
United States. Now this is a serious fault on 

38 



34 AN OPEN LETTER 

the part of a man filling so elevated a station and 
who adds to his declaration all the emphasis pos- 
sible in saying : " I weigh my words." If the 
state of affairs in France is so harmful to Cathol- 
icism, is it not strange that you waited longer 
than a year before making this indignant protest? 
That you allowed so long a time to go by would 
be understood, if the law once at work had proven 
filled with pitfalls or had been carried out in a 
hateful, tyrannical spirit. Now, just the opposite 
is the case, and our Government has not ceased 
from interpreting it in a straightforward, liberal 
way. 

Since your latest interview is not the outcome 
of a more patient study of documents and facts, 
it becomes needful to seek its cause elsewhere and 
to feel that the Archbishop of Baltimore allows 
himself to be drawn by a rush of international pro- 
tests, too harmonious in time and text, not to ap- 
pear somewhat artificial and inspired. The law 
has not changed since the day when a gentleman, 
whose high authority, I trust, you recognize, 
Count d'Haussonville, said of it : 

" After all, it is liberty, for hereafter Catholics, as 
such, can unite and own, that is, can rejoice in two 
essential rights. * * * Why, then, go on repeating 
that the Faith will meet with great dangers in France 
from the day the clergy cease to be paid by the govern- 
ment and the bishops to be nominated by the Minister 
of Worship? Such talk astonishes me, for it shows little 
confidence in the Church's vitality." 

I take the liberty to recommend these words 



TO CARDINAL GIBBONS 35 

of that illustrious Catholic writer to your consid- 
eration, as also the pamphlet from which they are 
quoted (1).* 

A plain Frenchman, who loves his small coun- 
try, France, and our large country, the Church, I 
feel myself forced to tell you how deplorable are 
your grave and solemn words, since they are cal- 
culated to create in those who depend solely upon 
them entirely wrong ideas about that which goes 
on among us at this moment. 

^ ^ ^ H< H< ^ 

Somewhat like those Spanish paintings, all light 
on one side and all darkness on the other, the pic- 
ture you draw for us wins the eye and gains notice. 
For you the light is America, where the Church 
has nothing to desire. France is the obverse dark- 
ness, where perverse and diabolic minds are sov- 
ereign masters, poisoning the air and lording it 
over the elect, whom they hold captive. 

There is no harm in the United States of Amer- 
ica appearing to you as an earthly paradise, and 
hence I am happy for your country, towards which 
as to a great sister, beloved and admired, turns the 
whole of France, except a clerical minority, as 
noisy as they are few (2). 

The more, however, this opposition of light and 
darkness is insisted upon, the more interesting it 
becomes; so much the more sober and judicious 
minds regard it as necessary not to accept it, as 
the true picture of the real, without careful proof. 

Behind every one of your statements is hidden 



For all notes, see Appendix. 



36 AN OPEN LETTER 

a kind of plea to those who govern France, to grant 
to the Roman Church the liberties it enjoys in 
America. Very handsome and very easy, to be 
sure. Too much so, in fact, for therein, permit me 
to tell you, lies the great blunder, which spoils all 
your expose : You forgot to tell your readers how 
the Catholicism of the New World differs from 
that of the Old. 

You speak of the Catholics of France as though 
by good luck they were the great majority. 
Neither you nor myself, Monseigneur, can know 
the relative number of the faithful, to whom 
Catholicism is a religious life and only such. But 
what you should know as well as myself — and I 
regret it as much as you — is that for a long time 
the enormous majority of those who in France 
have spoken in the name of Catholicism have been 
clericals. If you wish to be fair to our legislators 
and our Government, it would be well, when ad- 
dressing your fellow citizens, to begin by sketching 
with quick and happy pen the portrait of that 
strange sect, more political than religious, which 
in Latin countries attempt, too often successfully, 
to constitute Catholicism. 

You are aware that in France these temple traf- 
fickers have almost everywhere invaded the sanct- 
uary and terrorized the clergy (3). 

Why will you not address them? Why not de- 
nounce them as the shame and open sore of the 
Church? The day when France will find herself 
in the presence of a Catholicism emancipated from 
clericalism, be sure that no effort will be needed to 



TO CARDINAL GIBBONS 37 

give it liberty, and far from combatting it France 
will welcome it into a universal society filled only 
with religious aspirations as the incarnation of her 
dreams and her genius. 

Is it not unfortunate that after having said that 
separation in America means liberty, while in France 
it spells tyranny, you did not regard it as a duty 
to strengthen this statement by examples and 
proofs ? 

My perfect ignorance of American legislation 
permits me not to give a correct statement of the 
immense superiority it offers in this matter. I be- 
lieve I may, without impertinence, ask if your in- 
dignation, added to that of so many bishops of 
Canada, South America and Spain, led you not to 
condemn in France the very thing which seems to 
you natural and even glorious in America. 

The point upon which you insist most vehe- 
mently is that disputes which might arise in the 
Worship Associations would be settled by the 
Council of State. This is true. Would it be so 
frightful? I wish to think not; for, in fact, your- 
self, Monseigneur, in your letter of May 1st, 
1906,* say that in the United States such dis- 
putes are settled by the civil tribunals. In laying 
them before the Council of State, our law puts 
them before the highest tribunal of our land. 
How could this be bettered? Would you wish 
us to carry them to Rome? If such is your 
thought, I trust you will explain it to us and 



* Letter to Cardinal Richard. — Translator. 



38 AN OPEN LETTER 

show how in this point — so important — the French 
law differs from your own. 

Another note of this kit motiv running from one 
end to the other of your views, and by its simplic- 
ity and unity at once its beauty and its danger, is 
the notion that France might now be the victim 
of God's enemies. It is not, however, easy to un- 
derstand how atheists — that is, people who admit 
not the existence of God — can hate a God who in 
their eyes exists not. 

True, in speaking of Jacobins and of the hatred 
of religion, you follow only the forms of language 
in use among most Catholic organs on this side 
of the ocean. These think it well to keep up the 
ways of training of those mothers who, in order 
to keep their children from wandering away into 
the depths of the garden, tell them : the devil is 
hidden behind those trees. Soon the day dawns — 
sooner than is believed — when the child knows 
that there is nothing behind the trees and loses all 
trust in his mother's word. If, on the contrary, he 
still believes her, the outcome will be no happier, 
for when grown up he will not cease to fear men 
and nature and look around for snares and demons. 

Is it unfair to suppose that if Latin Europe has 
so many sceptics, so many helpless, so many lax; if 
it is inferior to the New World, this is due in part 
at least to such deplorable upbringing? 

France may have atheists, but they have not 
dreamed of elevating their opinions into official 
doctrine. To grant them such aspirations, we must 



TO CARDINAL GIBBONS 39 

believe that they carry " Arriere-pensees " and are 
liars and hypocrites. By what right do we think 
so? Better inspired, indeed, was that humble, 
brave priest (the Abbe Lemire, member of Parlia- 
ment), who had the courage to declare from the 
tribune of the Chamber of Deputies that he be- 
lieved in the sincerity of those who declare that 
they wish to make the law of separation a law of 
liberty and deliverance as well for the Church as 
for the State. 

The clericals have been silent on this memorable 
speech of the Abbe Lemire (4). That a priest 
could be cheered by the French Parliament and 
even from the benches of the deputies who call 
themselves Catholics, is a fact fatal to that picture 
of our national congress which is at times spread 
abroad. Silence followed that speech and at times 
I would love to believe that it was not a studied 
silence. But journals, anxious to win respect and 
consideration, should not too often relapse into 
such sort of forgetfulness. 

With what a wealth of telegrams has not the 
scattering of the seminaries been told! Now in 
omitting to add that it was simply a question of the 
State taking over properties belonging to it, upon 
the public was impressed the conviction that re- 
ligious education was at stake and the formation 
of the clergy hindered. How forgetful not to 
add that to-day throughout France the seminaries 
are freely reopened in new houses. So well was 
it done that strangers coming among us are as- 
tonished to see nuns, priests, monks going about 



40 AN OPEN LETTER 

peacefully and the religious services kept up as 
in the past. 

I hold no brief for France, but I feel assured 
that if you cared to raise the issue, you would 
find it difficult, with the exception or some un- 
worthy priests or some apostates driven by a mys- 
tic fury against their past, to discover among lay- 
men any of whom you might say that they are 
led on by hatred of God. 

" The violent sectaries who long for the destruction 
of the Church and of all religion are in France but a 
very small minority." 

Permit me to apply this opinion to your state- 
ments. Your Eminence. It comes from no friend 
of mine; it is that of Father Abt, S. J. (5). 

In asking you to judge the present crisis more 
fairly and calmly, a task is proffered not beyond 
the powers of a prince of the Church. A priest, 
whose character is as well appreciated by you, I 
trust, as at home, the Abbe Felix Klein, published 
some months ago a work in which he knew how 
to point out with much tact the state of mind at 
present in France. This well-known professor at 
the Catholic Institute of Paris thought not that 
his love for the church made it a duty upon 
him to ignore or despise all that lives or seems 
to live outside of her (6). 

That Holy Mother teaches that in the next 
world there will be heaven, hell and purgatory. 
I take it that she impresses upon her children like 
views of this world; that she teaches them that 
most men, Frenchmen even, are neither saints nor 



TO CARDINAL GIBBONS 41 

devils, that they are children of humanity, and if 
to attain its heights depends upon their own ef- 
forts, this victory also has need of the prayer, love 
and help of the Just. 

It must be granted. Your Eminence, that the 
stand you believed it a duty to assume in the 
present events has pained your friends in France, 
so much the more as they had counted upon the 
disinterested help of the American Episcopate as 
leading to peace. 

We fancied the distance that you are from Rome 
and from Paris would enable you to follow the 
affair with an impartiality not to be expected of 
those in the thick of the fight. We were hoping 
that standing above the daily fracas, the petty 
skirmishes and combats, you would grasp the main 
lines of the controversy and instead of seeing in 
it a disaster and an anguish, you would turn your 
eyes and ours also to the future with its glorious 
vista of duties and cares. The term separation of 
the Churches and the State is wholly negative and 
taken alone would give a false idea of the crisis. 
From the standpoint of the Government, the ex- 
pression holds, for it states, indeed, the mark 
which the greatest fact in modern Christian evolu- 
tion will leave upon the State registers. Let not 
then the official language mislead us. A birth is 
also a separation. Now it is a birth that we 
witness; the bringing forth of a new civilization. 

Those who attack the new law with the cry of 
Liberty! Liberty! seem, indeed, not to understand 



42 AN OPEN LETTER 

that our fathers, in proclaiming freedom of con- 
science, laid down a principle whence, in a future 
more or less distant, would surely issue the separa- 
tion of the Churches and the State. For, from the 
moment that the State protects one or more 
churches, the liberty it leaves to the rest is not 
true liberty. It is only toleration. 

The question of church property fills a great deal 
of your interview. Have you, perhaps, too hastily 
likened the ownership of churches in America to 
that in European countries? 

Our clergy protested loudly against returning its 
property to the State — a return they might have 
hindered and a great majority of the Episcopate 
wished to prevent by accepting the law, as we 
shall see further on. And yet they seemed less 
anxious than you, Monseigneur. This relative 
moderation arises from the fact that they know 
perfectly well that church properties belong to the 
clergy in pretty much the same way as the pre- 
fectures belong to the prefects or the Louvre 
Museum to its Board of Administrators. 

As long as the church was part of the public 
service, it should enjoy the same privileges as the 
rest of State officialdom. But if, as authorities on 
the subject assure us, the number of French Cath- 
olics are not more than three or four millions, it 
is perfectly proper that the places, given them 
when ten times the present number, should relapse 
to the State. 

It is right also to reply that a large part of 



TO CARDINAL GIBBONS 43 

Ecclesiastical properties come from gifts and lega- 
cies, made by persons who wish explicitly to main- 
tain Roman Catholic worship. Now, just as the 
purchasers of a cemetery lot in perpetuity know 
very well that it is not absolute, so the dying, who 
leave donations to certain works, should realize 
that after a period long or short, their wishes 
would be forgotten. The day the Church gained 
the victory over Rome, she made no scruple in 
taking over the Pagan temples, which surely were 
not built to foster the worship of the Galilean. 
These latter days, our land is filled with preachers, 
very eloquent, indeed, who love to expatiate upon 
the words " The stones will cry out." Winding 
up, they point to the stones of the church of the 
National Vow, Montmartre, covered with initials 
and inscriptions, and protest indignantly against 
the profane intruders. It was a grand stroke, yet 
in spite of the preacher's evident emotion, the 
audience listened calmly. Perhaps they fancied 
that the cry of the stones is a plight of the soul 
and that at Rome the plaint of the Pagan inscrip- 
tions, far from troubling the worship of the Chris- 
tian intruders with the nasty cries : " Away with 
the robber," mingled itself discreetly with the 
liturgy in order to chant: Christus vincit, Christus 
regnat, Christus imperat. 

Behold doubtless why, when the journals, the 
self-styled pious, published the most wicked insin- 
uations against the Government or the Parliament, 
public opinion was in no wise affected. For well 
it knew, even in the smallest hamlets, that of rob- 

4 



44 AN OPEN LETTER 

bery there could be no question, when properties, 
belonging to no particular person, were set aside 
for the benefit of the poor or for works of public 
usefulness. 

Is it not strange, furthermore, that the Church 
holds a perfectly Pagan notion of property, and as 
firmly as though it were a principle which needed 
only to be laid down? Would it not be better if 
she sought her practical teachings among the ex- 
amples left her by so many saintly souls, of whom 
she is rightly proud? 

St. Francis of Assisi declared that it was not 
right to sing of worthy knights when the heart 
was lax. Would he not be shocked to hear his own 
praises chanted by men who would let loose civil 
war in France in order not to lose properties which 
they earned not by the sweat of their brows? 

" It is not every day that there is offered to Catholics," 
wrote M. Pierre Jay, " the sublime chance of presenting 
the other cheek. Behold it now offered after a century 
of quiet. Will they know how to profit by this favor in 
order to reconquer the world in renouncing it?" (7.) 



Is it claimed that the new legislation is perfect? 
Not a single politician can be found who thinks so, 
and fortunately our legislators make no pretence 
to infallibility. Perhaps their work would have 
left less to be desired if the most interested parties, 
viz., the clergy, had shared in its preparation. Un- 
luckily, they allowed themselves to be carried 
away into a policy of obstruction. They were 
ignorant of the law. They listened neither to the 



TO CARDINAL GIBBONS 45 

advice of prudent men who pleaded for a settle- 
ment, nor the voice of the saints who preached 
the forgiveness of offences and the love of 
enemies. 

The clergy stood apart and thus acted exactly- 
opposite to what the American clergy would do. 
Once more this shows you how unjust it would be 
to compare the attitude of our respective govern- 
ments without first stating the contrasts in the 
conduct of the clergy of both lands. 

Of course, the law is not perfect, but its base 
will remain, for it responds to a profound change 
in the trend of public opinion in our country. A 
political defeat might lead to a temporary halt, per- 
haps even to a reaction. But such a result would 
have that indefinable superficialness and vague- 
ness, shown by every regime which had hoped to 
uproot in France the principles of the Revolution. 

Generations follow one another and are not alike. 
The hot-headed religieuse who call upon the church 
authorities to resist obstinately the French, re- 
minding them that after 1793 came 1802, seem to 
forget that if the Concordat made peace between 
the Church and the State, far from being a victory 
for the church, that treaty was in reality the ac- 
ceptance by the Papacy of a whole part in the 
conquest of the Revolution. Thus far, no results 
have followed from the tactics of the clericals, who 
have not stopped from making every effort to lead 
the Government into the same pitfalls as in 1793. 
If, as far as the Government is concerned, they 
are stranded, they have been more successful 



46 AN OPEN LETTER 

among Catholics. They have brought it about that 
many minds are beset with violently bloody fig- 
ments together with a chronic state of nightmare. 

Perhaps it would have been better for the glory 
of the Carmelites of Compiegne, if their beatifica- 
tion had not seemed a by-play in these childish 
schemes.* 

You assure us, Monseigneur, that the Jacobins 
are not yet wiped out. The opposite would be 
wonderful; permit me, however, to tell you that 
between those of our day and their forerunners 
lies a great difference. The latter, born under 
Louis XV, were brought up almost to a man upon 
the church's knee by the Jesuits as tutors.f Those 
of our day have been reared upon the knee of 
France, and excepting enough to prove the rule 
they have no taste for persecution. Neither for 
them nor for France do I regret this, but I feel 
very sincerely for a host of flaming prophets, all 
of whose predictions and calculation it serves to 
upset. 



* The Carmelites of Compiegne were put vmder the guillotine 
in 1794. Pius X beatified them, May 27th, 1906. At present the 
cause of the bishops and priests massacred in September, 1792, is 
before Rome and their beatification will no doubt follow. It 
seems as if the purpose of these ceremonies, apparently for re- 
ligrious motives, is really in the main political. — Translator. 

t The Jesuits were the great official instructors of France for 
the first half of the eighteenth century. In 1764, the order was 
thrust forth from the country and they left behind them an army 
of the bitterest enemies that Christianity has ever had. To do them 
justice, they were destroyed by weapons which they had themselves 
supplied. The intelligence which they had developed and sharpened 
turned inevitably against the incurable faiilts in their own system. 
(Critical Miscellanies by John Morley, " Condorcet." Vol. II, 
p. 167.)— Translator. 



1 



TO CARDINAL GIBBONS 47 

If for many months, the words, in large capitals : 
Religious Persecution in France have been 
used as headlines in religious journals, not a sin- 
gle fact has happened to justify the charge of re- 
ligious persecution. Have the majority in power 
at any time decreed dogmas to which the minority 
had to submit? Have they condemned and forbade 
to their fellow citizens certain beliefs? Such a 
spectacle would not be new in France, but when 
we have referred to it, you know as well as I who 
were then in power.* Men not yet fifty years old 
can recall the day when Protestant soldiers had to 
genuflect when the Blessed Sacrament was pass- 
ing. Is there anything similar in the new law or 
even in the conduct of Parliament? (8) 

True, the reproach is brought against the law 
of separation, and it is one of your chief sorrows, 
that the Roman Catholic hierarchy is ignored. It 
is creditable, however, that if you had read in their 
fulness our parliamentary debates and not biased 
resumes of them, you could not have made such 
a charge. 

In fact, in §4, it is enacted that the new wor- 
ship associations shall be created : 

" In conformity to the rules of general ordinance of 
the worship whose exercise they propose to carry on." 

It is no secret that the general ordinance of Ro- 
man Catholic worship includes the hierarchy and 
it was furthermore announced that the authority of 
the hierarchy was recognized in that text. (9) 

* Reference, doubtless, to the massacre of St. Bartholomew and 
the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. — Translator. 



48 AN OPEN LETTER 

And yet this prevented not Pius X from declar- 
ing that the law ignored the hierarchy. Absorbed 
by the notion he has framed to himself of the men 
in power in France, he has turned a deaf ear to 
every voice raised to warn him of his error. 

A number of Catholics, aroused at the prospect 
of the huge misunderstanding which was growing 
between France and Rome, addressed to him a 
bold appeal. They found themselves the butt of 
the vilest insinuations of the clerical press, because 
they had written anonymously. And this they did 
in order to leave their ideas work of their own 
strength without any fear that their origin might 
add to or detract from their weight. (10) 

What, however, at Rome count the most vener- 
able and weighty names ? Evident it became when, 
December 7th, 1906, Cardinal Lecot, Archbishop of 
Bordeaux, and Mgr. Germain, Archbishop of Tou- 
louse, took the steps needed in order that their 
cures should make the annual declaration for the 
maintenance of worship. (11) 

The next day, December 8th, Rome obliged 
them, under threat of being treated as schismatics, 
to forbid their cures the very counsels they gave 
them the day before. (12) 

Whoever will study these facts would doubtless 
find it hard to say that the condemnations issuing 
from Rome repeat only the unanimous wish of the 
clergy of France and that the annual declaration 
implies a submission forbidden by conscience. 

Here, as throughout the whole crisis, Rome 
seems to have in view above all else not to impart 



TO CARDINAL GIBBONS 49 

light, but to have its own way and to shut out 
every individual initiative. It is not a strife fruit- 
ful of ideas to which we are invited; the chief 
thought seems to be that it is question of a war 
only to end in wiping out the enemy. 

But, permit me to add, Monseigneur, there is a 
danger threatening the Church worse than separa- 
tion, worse than all possible persecutions. It is, if 
in spite of the publicity of our parliamentary de- 
bates, priests, bishops and pope, turning their eyes 
from the reality, would judge the deeds, words, 
and the men from the pictures drawn day by day, 
in a hateful press, which seems to have undertaken 
the task of misleading the views of Catholics in 
order to provoke them. (13) 

In the long run, nothing can withstand facts. 
The church is rather easily pardoned for having 
created legends, not always disinterested, in order 
to nourish the childhood of our civilization. She 
is forgiven for having so well unlearned some 
things, which to-day could not be called by their 
right names. 

The best means by which Rome may recommend 
to us her metaphysics and her dogma would be, 
doubtless, to maintain an implacable severity to- 
wards herself in whatever regards the modest 
statement of facts and the perfect correctness of 
language. 

For a long while nothing could be more just and 
more straight than the attitude of the French Gov- 
ernment. When its language has been wrongly 



50 AN OPEN LETTER 

explained, this has been done only by enemies. 
Can as much be said of the Holy See? 

That august authority speaks only when it 
wishes, and looks not upon it as a fault to take its 
time before proclaiming its decisions. And yet 
when these decisions are known, everybody, friend 
or enemy, is at sixes and sevens as to their mean- 
ing and bearing. 

If only the impious and infidels had misunder- 
stood the orders of Pius X in the Bull Gravissimo, 
it might be alleged that their malice had changed 
the sense. But it is known that Catholics in the 
closest touch with the Holy See, like the unbe- 
lievers, thought that he accepted recourse to the 
common law. Such a general mistake by all read- 
ers as to the meaning of a document, issued to 
mark out a line of conduct, is a fact of special 
importance. 

In sheltering himself under the common law, 
Pius X was keeping an attitude, correct, simple, 
and perfectly dignified. But in compelling Car- 
dinal Lecot to contradict himself and in rejecting 
with so much brusqueness the very common law 
to which he turned for shelter, Pius X has led im- 
partial observers to feel that he is led by a child- 
ish, hasty obstinacy ; the hardheadedness of a child 
who knows only that he will not yield. 

I will not give much time to the contradictions 
and errors that can be found in your statements. 

You have imputed to M. Briand words about 
uprooting from the minds of the children of 



TO CARDINAL GIBBONS 51 

France the old faith, of chasing Christ from the 
army, the navy and the schools, which he never 
uttered. The denial was at once given to you; I 
insist no further upon it, save to point out that it 
cut away the main prop of your argument. 

As to M. Viviani's words, the enormous re-echo 
they make is sufficient to show how unusual they 
were. While looking upon them as being as much 
out of place as theatrical, still I cannot understand 
how intelligent men can so strongly call for the 
freedom of their own faith at the very moment they 
are pouring out floods of anger against the faith — 
or the lack of faith — of a fellow citizen, as is M. 
Viviani. 

You may not know that some days later, his 
colleague, M. Louis Passy, taking advantage of his 
temporary filling the presidential chair, spoke of 
God before the National Assembly with the ac- 
cents of an unimpeachable Catholic orthodoxy. In 
perfect courtesy the chamber listened to him. 
They, whom you call the enemies of God, dis- 
turbed him not, and sat quietly while the Right ap- 
plauded. Furthermore, at the session of January 
9th, 1906, M. Paul Bourgeois, deputy of La Vendee, 
in his turn presiding, launched forth in a long 
speech entirely religious in trend, in a fashion, 
whose opposite M. Viviani seems only to have fol- 
lowed. 

Does it not seem to you, Monseigneur, that 
Catholics should respect the unbelief of Atheists, if 
they expect the latter to respect their own faith? 
Think you that in America you would enjoy full 



52 AN OPEN LETTER 

and perfect liberty, if you proved yourselves un- 
able to respect the liberties of the " Sects," no 
matter how fantastic. 

Such an act of hard common sense is too much 
as yet for the mental power of many French Cath- 
olics, and not later than a few Sundays ago in 
Paris they wrought much evil in disturbing an 
archiepiscopal mass, which they were perfectly 
right in regarding as schismatic, but which it was 
their duty to leave alone. 

If this attack on liberty had been the work of a 
lot of street arabs, I would not think ol noticing 
it, but the leading Catholic journals, specially la 
Croix, far from denouncing it, endorsed it by their 
favorable reports. 

Allow me to quote a few lines from La Croix du 
Card, February 10th, 1907 : 

" The sacrilegious mass of the prelate ended so and so. 
At the close, the indignant Catholics renewed their pro- 
tests, and during the address of the schismatic prelate 
sang to the air of the Mascot a ribaldry, of which one 
verse is here given: 

(( Un vieux singe d'Amerique 
(( Debarque de Chicago 
(f Vient benir la Republique 
(( Des cambrioleurs legaux. 
((Ah! n'nous troublons pas pour ga, 
(( On le chahute, on le chahute! 
((Ah! n'nous troublons pas pour ga, 
(( On le chahutera. » 

Such, Monseigneur, are the journals in France, 
which speak in the church's name, and every year 
receive the apostolic benediction. 

Another mistake, which I venture to point out 



TO CARDINAL GIBBONS 53 

to you briefly, is what you say apropos of church 
property, viz.: that in 1802 it was turned over to 
the State on the expressed condition that it would 
go to support the clergy. The Concordat has no 
such expressed condition. By Article 13, the Holy 
See " for the sake of peace and the happy re-estab- 
lishment of the Catholic religion " agrees never to 
disturb the holders of church property. In Article 
14, the Government of the Republic guarantees a 
proper support to the clergy. There is, however, 
no connection between the two articles and the 
words cited from Article 13 show that the Pope 
accepted purely and simply the results, and there 
was no question of a rent in perpetuity due by the 
State to the Church. 

But, however serious the matters to which here- 
tofore I have had the honor of calling your atten- 
tion, they are much less than the great error you 
fall into by your silence as to the immense blessing 
secured to the Church by the new law — liberty. 
A liberty which she never had even in the days 
when she was on top, respected, or should I say, 
pampered, by the civil power. Before even the 
new law was passed, the rupture of diplomatic re- 
lations between the Republic and the Holy See 
gave to the Church two essential liberties, two, in- 
deed, which she had never enjoyed under any 
regime in France, the liberty of ecclesiastical nom- 
inations and the liberty of meetings. (14) 

The Pope hastened to take advantage of the 
first, and since the days so many ages ago, when 



54 AN OPEN LETTER 

St. Gregory sent St. Augustine and his troop of 
bishops to England, there never was seen a similar 
ceremony before the Apostolic Chair.* In their 
turn, the bishops were as hurried in naming cures 
to all the vacant parishes. Thrice, finally, the 
French Episcopate enjoyed the second liberty by 
holding their meetings, when they discussed in 
perfect freedom every question they had at 
heart. (15) 

Now I dare ask respectfully of you. Your Emi- 
nence, can a Government which day after day gives 
to a body, as strongly organized as the Church, 
such liberty, be likened to I know not what sort of 
tyrants, who carry in their hearts the hatred of 
God and His Church? 

How do the inconveniences of the law stand 
alongside of these freedoms? Is it not evident 
that if our rulers were such as they have been de- 
scribed, they would have taken precious care not 
to annul a treaty which by allowing them to name 
bishops and pastors kept in their hands a rare 
means of bondage. 

The more it is supposed that the French Gov- 
ernment wishes only to make war upon religion, 
the more wonderful is the fair dealing, of which it 
has given proof in renouncing the influence secured 



* Reference to the fourteen bishops consecrated by Pius X in 
Rome. M. Sabatier means not that St. Gregory consecrated St. 
Augustine and his brother bishops. He refers to the liberty the 
Pope enjoyed in 596 as regards England and the renewal of that 
liberty in 1906 as regards France. St. Augustine was consecrated 
by Virgilius of Aries in 597. Later on, St. Gregory authorized him 
to consecrate twelve bishops for as many sees in England. — 
Translator. 



TO CARDINAL GIBBONS 55 

by the Concordat, over the Church's desti- 
nies. (16) 

It might also be clear to thoughtful people that 
the Pope's haste to make use of the advantages of 
the new situation created a sort of tacit under- 
standing that he would accept its inconven- 
iences. (17) 

So true are all these considerations here put be- 
fore Your Eminence, that the entire French Epis- 
copate, when acknowledging the Encyclical Vehe- 
menter, began with a solemn hosanna and welcomed 
" with an unanimous outburst of thankfulness the 
hour when one of its dearest liberties was restored 
to the Church of France." 

In thus speaking [May 30th, 1906,] and placing 
the paean of victory at the forefront of a solemn 
address to the Holy Father, Cardinal Lecot, Arch- 
bishop of Bordeaux, and along with him the 
French Episcopate, proclaimed to the whole world 
the happy results naturally following from the new 
law. (18) True, indeed, later on, in response to 
the Encyclical Vehementer, " a true monument of 
wisdom both human and divine," so they styled it, 
the bishops condemned the false principle of the 
possible separation of Church and State; but this 
condemnation is in theory and affects America as 
well as France, and cannot be taken apart from the 
subsequent deliberations. 

Now it is just this that the Holy See hesitated 
not to do. In the Bull Gravissimo, Pope Pius X, 
passing over this declaration of principle on the 
part of the Episcopate with a simple reference, left 



56 AN OPEN LETTER 

France and the whole world ignorant that this 
opening statement, which was a kind of platonic 
compliment to an impossible ideal, was followed 
by discussions, long and serious, when most of the 
bishops proposed various practical solutions. 

If by 72 votes against 2, the assembly con- 
demned separation, it is but the truth to add that 
by a vote of 48 against 26 the bishops favored an 
understanding. Finally, they submitted to the 
Holy See statutes in harmony with the Civil Law 
without harm or hurt to Catholic doctrine. This 
settlement, offered by Mgr. Fulbert-Petit, Arch- 
bishop of Besangon, was carried by 56 votes 
against 18. 

Allow me, Your Eminence, to remind you of the 
amazement which spread over France when, on the 
publication of the Encyclical Gravissimo, it was 
known from disclosures that no one dared deny, 
how greatly differed what had passed at the meet- 
ing of the bishops and what was contained in the 
Encyclical apparently. Regrettable it is, that 
words wounding the dignity of the Holy See were 
uttered. Would it not have been better to have 
safeguarded that dignity by the Pope speaking so 
clearly that his words might be understood with- 
out affording those who knew not the facts a 
chance to believe the very opposite of the truth? 
This astonishment, so evident among us, passed 
into all lands where our debates had been followed 
with some interest. To-day it almost seems for- 
gotten. But history never has a short memory. 

Behold, then, the great majority of the French 



TO CARDINAL GIBBONS 57 

Episcopate, knowing the profound changes which 
are the outcome of the trend of ideas among our 
people, while in theory opposing separation, were 
ready in practice to counsel the acceptance of the 
law. 

On their part, the cream of French Catholics had 
anticipated this acceptance in a letter (19) signed 
by men whose names had long been known beyond 
the ocean ; in the first place by Ferdinand Brune- 
tiere, Denys Cochin, George Goyau, Anatole 
Leroy-Beaulieu. Thureau-Dangin, the Marquis of 
Vogiie, the Count d'Haussonville, George Picot, 
etc. 

Do you think that all you say of our new French 
legislation, the perverse account you give of our 
Parliament and our Government, leaves it possible 
to poorly informed readers to realize that this fa- 
mous law was, upon mature reflection, accepted in 
a way by the clergy as well as by the eminent lay- 
men above mentioned? 

sK ;|s 5{? ^ >!« iK 

Let me add that the above was endorsed by the 
popular vote. You are not unaware that the gen- 
eral elections to Parliament took place last summer 
(1906), and they resulted in an extraordinary vic- 
tory for the deputies who favored separation. 
True, Mgr. Bourne, Archbishop of Westminster, 
hesitated not recently to state that the elections 
in France might not have offered a correct notion 
of opinion because of the ease with which the Gov- 
ernment could bring pressure upon them. And I 
can hardly understand how insinuations so grave 



58 AN OPEN LETTER 

could have been reproduced cheerfully and without 
protest in a number of French journals (January 
7th, 1907). 

To demonstrate the injustice of such accusations, 
it is unnecessary to remark that, freedom of the 
press in France being unlimited, the Government's 
enemies had ways without stint to pour out their 
complaints ; but strangers who would doubt of the 
general honesty of our elections need only make 
a simple reflection in order to make their minds 
easy. 

In a large country, which are the sections the 
Government puts on pressure most effectually? 
Surely, there where education has least penetrated 
and where the resistance of individuals to the State 
is least certain. It was so under the Empire and 
Royalty; in the most backward cantons the Gov- 
ernment won its chief victories. To-day the roles 
are reversed. It is in the mountainous districts, 
where flourishes intellectual and physical misery, 
the Government met its most violent opponents. 
The Right was not deceived ; well they knew that 
in order not to receive a sure defeat, one of its 
leaders, M. Piou, who had even received from 
Rome a kind of canonical backing (20), chose to 
be elected in one of the most uncouth, most un- 
cultured and most ignorant of our Departments, 
viz., Lozere. 

Is this known in America ? We should say not ; 
for if you were aware of it, you would judge us 
quite differently. Know you that since 1870 the 



TO CARDINAL GIBBONS 59 

Clerical party have not stopped attacking all our 
liberties ? At first, like Frenchmen, they struggled 
above board; but once they saw they could never 
thus destroy them, they turned to crooked ways 
and crafty means, till finally they became a hybrid 
group, made up of the refuse of all tyrannies and 
self-called Action liberale populaire. 

In a large number of dioceses the Ecclesiastical 
machinery was in the eyes of the electors the fos- 
ter parent of the Action liberale. The result was 
what it should have been. 

Throughout the whole land, there was a hearty 
uprising against the hypocrisy of the candidates 
and a warm anger against the priests who had put 
at their service their sacerdotal influence. Among 
us one sin is never forgiven — hypocrisy. Too 
often alas, the men who pretend to represent the 
Church without the slightest protest on her part 
have amazed the country by the ease with which 
they deceived opinion or strove to deceive it. 

Ceaselessly is it said that the Church is indif- 
ferent to the diverse forms of government ; but un- 
fortunately the clergy, who from 1802 to 1870 had 
astonished the country by their faculty of adapting 
themselves to every successive regime during those 
two generations, all of a sudden surprised every- 
body by their radical inability to accept the 
Democracy. 

Under Leo XIII, there was a rally; but consider- 
ing the attitude to-day of those who obeyed then 
the brilliant directions of the Pope, it must be 
granted that either his instructions had no sense 

5 



60 AN OPEN LETTER 

or bearing, or that they who accepted them saw in 
them only a dextrous move destined in the end to 
swallow up the republic. 

The Church is not dead in France, but she has 
exhibited a moral and social incapacity, from which 
she can free herself only with great difficulty. 
What the conscience of the country, be it that of 
the brainy men or that of the dullards, demands of 
her is that she be a school of morals. To this call 
she has not answered. 

She understood not the voice of the public con- 
science, demanding of her to crown personal moral- 
ity with a civic and social morality. What, also, 
perhaps, caused her to lose the most of her power, 
is that she has stood by while her representatives 
lay in wait for universal suffrage in order to cor- 
rupt or destroy it. Never has she been known to 
undertake in good earnest her own improvement. 

What would make her lovable and strong in our 
day would be if, as a rule, her members were mor- 
ally better than others. Whereas, in fact, their 
chief characteristic in the eyes of their fellow citi- 
zens is that they think and act as if the advance of 
thought had been held up some six or seven cen- 
turies ago. 

Finally, these men, who stand up so stoutly for 
tradition, have a very special way of looking at 
it. Their religious traditions retain the prophets, 
but exclude the prophetic spirit; retain the Gos- 
pels, but shut out Gospel faith in the future. 
Specially they count upon extracts from the 
Fathers, separated from their context, splendid 



TO CARDINAL GIBBONS 61 

flowers, no doubt, but dried up in a framework 
formed of scholastic treatises. 

In national traditions even, these Catholics 
make selections and would like to wipe out cer- 
tain periods. Willingly they oppose the sons of 
St. Louis to the sons of the Revolution, as if the 
latter were not our grandfathers as the former 
were our great grandfathers ! On the other hand, 
French democracy, without canonizing any page 
of the past or blotting out any, turns more will- 
ingly to the future, not so much in order to fore- 
see it as to prepare for it. 

Behold, Your Eminence, some points which 
must be taken into account in order to understand 
the present crisis. Say to your countrymen that 
French Catholics have too often deserved to be 
called " strangers within the gate " because of 
their indifference to questions over which every- 
one around them is eager and wrought up. Tell 
them that because of their dreaming about super- 
natural and miraclous virtues, they seem to forget 
the greatness, the beauty and the holiness of 
manly work and human effort. Say to them again 
that a large portion of our higher clergy have not 
yet learned to stop casting into simple souls the 
germs of the strangest misunderstandings in con- 
trasting with the Gospels the principles of 1789 
and the Declaration of the Rights of Man. (21) 

Tell them that too often they pass their days 
in useless regrets and know not how to observe 
all that is grand and consoling in the present hour. 
They understand not the profound revolution 



62 AN OPEN LETTER 

which is working its way in the mind and heart 
of the country nor the immense progress already 
wrought in steadfastness of character. 

France is not what she would like to be; she 
dwells upon what is wanting to her, rather than 
upon what she has ; and this feeling is new enough 
among us to be worth the while to refer to it. Is 
it necessary to add that I speak of that which 
is lacking to her from the spiritual and moral 
standpoint? Materially, alas, she feels as much as 
ever the wounds of 1870, but recalls it rather as 
a wound to her self-love than as an error she re- 
grets as much for the sake of the victor and his 
allies as for her own. She ceases not to think of 
it, but without hate or anger, and wants neither a 
war of revenge nor to forget it. What, then, is 
her wish? Would she expect a miracle? No 
longer. 

Highminded and at the same time modest, re- 
served and also resolute, she realizes that the day 
has dawned for mankind to take a new step to- 
wards peace among the nations. She desires peace 
firmly, not from weakness or closeness, but be- 
cause wars are become to her both wicked and 
foolish. 

The duties of a citizen towards that vast family, 
known as his country, are also among her chief 
matters of reflection. Conscious is she that her 
answers to them, especially since 1870, have noth- 
ing trivial and passing in them. 

Far from the love of country seeming to entail 



TO CARDINAL GIBBONS 63 

necessarily hatred of the stranger, she sees in it, 
on the contrary, the first step and readiness to a 
still more comprehensive love. 

Now in these thoughts that engross her atten- 
tions, in these dreams she cannot shake off, France 
had hoped to have the Church at her side to direct 
and encourage her. This juncture came not. 

That venerable mother of our civilization under- 
stands not what is going on in the hearts of her 
children. On seeing them absorbed in a dreamy 
longing with their eyes gazing out beyond the 
horizon, she no longer grasps the pure or manly 
in that gaze. She would arrest their growth and 
keep them at her side as babes forever. 

A gross deception it is to behold in the present 
crisis only a dispute between the Holy See and 
the Government of the Republic. Step by step, 
ecclesiastical authority has turned in upon itself. 
Disdaining always to answer every request to ex- 
plain, it frequently strikes with the spiritual and 
temporal rods, frightfully so at times and then 
again ridiculously. (22) 

The Church is not cut off from among the liv- 
ing; but she seems to have undertaken the task of 
breaking every tie by which men act and counter- 
act upon one another. 

Try, Your Eminence, to make up a list of all the 
ecclesiastics of France whom you know, specially 
of those whose works you have profitably read, 
and say honestly if such a list tallies not almost 
to a dot with the lists of suspects or banned, issued 
by the Roman Congregations. 



64 AN OPEN LETTER 

What I have said to you aloud, is carried in the 
hearts of thousands of priests, as well as of a large 
part of the French Episcopate, among whom are 
they who would have expressed it all with an elo- 
quence and a power of love and sorrow that my 
words carry not. You well know that if they have 
not done so, it is because the Episcopate have no 
right to speak other than to applaud the Holy 
Father. Was it thought that when Papal Infalli- 
bility, restricted indeed to questions of faith and 
morals, was defined ex cathedra, that some thirty 
years later there would come a sweet pious Pope, 
who would act as if the Pope were infallible at 
all times and upon all questions, as though he held 
within himself the entire thought and the whole 
life of the Church? 

Our bishops deliberate, but in darkness and in 
silence. How do you fancy lay France feels about 
all this mystery? It knows well that it is not 
enough to hide behind bolts and bars and de- 
voutly recite the Veni Creator, in order to receive 
all the light needed. 

The legends of Christmas and St. Nicholas are 
told to boys of fifteen years. To-day without any 
shadow of doubt, we know that if the most ven- 
erable assembly of the world — to which you be- 
long — deliberates under the Eternal Eye, it also 
ponders under eyes more earthly and less disin- 
terested. If the secrecy of the Conclave of 1903 
was not disturbed by the Roman populace pouring 
in, external influence knew how, by ways that are 
dark, to successfully penetrate it. Its secret is 



TO CARDINAL GIBBONS 65 

now known to us ; a secret in no wise to anybody's 
credit. Would that the Church put aside ways 
that make her appear out of joint with our times. 
Would that she announced, not in empty words, 
but with all her strength, that if she has the truth, 
she keeps it not hidden away in a coffer as a treas- 
ure, acquired once and for all, whose key she alone 
holds, but that she has truth in the measure in 
which she finds it and finds it in the measure in 
which she seeks for it. 

Let her do this and without renouncing an iota 
of the past, and she will find herself at once jour- 
neying alongside of the France of to-day, which is 
taken up, above all things, with every work of dis- 
interested intellectual effort, of love, of solidarity. 

Whosoever speaketh of the scepticism of our 
country, make it clear that they see only its sur- 
face. True, upon all sides are numbers, who have 
renounced the Bread of Life, which up to now the 
many churches offered to them. Far from this, 
however, being a proof that they no longer wish 
for spiritual food, it rather shows that the nour- 
ishment given of old suffices no longer. (23) 

What our people expect from their pastors is 
that they witness to the moral law, that they adorn 
and enrich life in explaining its meaning, and that 
from the pulpit are heard not only doctrinal and 
metaphysical truths, but that it above all imparts 
a word of sympathy and love for all that is good. 
Now, however, under the pretext of strengthening 
them against the devil and his snares, nearly all 



66 AN OPEN LETTER 

the pulpits of France are rostrums, whence Sunday- 
after Sunday is preached hatred. 

Many who go not to Church are reached by the 
journals for which she is responsible. Look at our 
religious press and say, if in styling it empty and 
hateful, it is judged too harshly. Now, bear well 
in mind that the work of the journals of Paris 
is spread by the efforts of countless local papers 
which also extend the evil. Excelling in the art of 
calumny, they insinuate the vilest falsehoods ; how- 
ever, with such vagueness as to escape the courts. 

What must be the state of such minds, who 
fancy that God, Christ and His Church, are served 
by such falsehoods and libels? What must be 
thought of an ecclesiastical authority, implacable 
against errors in doctrine, but has never a word of 
reproach against those who poison their fellow 
men with such morals? A great shame is it, Mon- 
seigneur, which has turned from the Church more 
Christians than one would suppose. (24) 

There remain faults to fall into, and come they 
will. Ecclesiastical authority is neither at its first 
nor its final error. At this moment it is its own 
judge, nor will this prove the least outcome of the 
present crisis. 

Certainly I believe not in breaking off unity; I 
hope strongly, on the contrary, that the unity, ex- 
ternal and official, of to-day will be transformed 
and find its fulfillment in becoming the union of 
wills toward a common effort. 

Henceforth, Rome will follow still the old ways 



TO CARDINAL GIBBONS 67 

of so many human authorities, already vanished or 
about to vanish. It will keep on refusing to permit 
itself to be discussed, and will continue to prepare 
in the dark, decisions which at times will give 
light unexpectedly and at other times exhaust the 
patience of the most resigned; decisions, always 
peremptory and absolute, but never destined to 
become the torch to light up with its translucent 
beams, like God's sunlight, the path of the sinner 
as well as of the just. Now and then it will vouch- 
safe some signs, but as they would appear unim- 
portant, Rome will impart them now so vaguely, 
again so elusively, that they will only answer to 
something far indeed from the simple truth and 
might even be likened to falsehoods. 

Some days ago was published a declaration, 
signed by the unanimous French Episcopate. 
Now to-day it is known, from evidence which must 
be admitted, that the declaration was drafted in 
Rome and published without securing the assent 
of all whose names it bears. It would be cruel and 
improper to add more. (25) 

Another fault, moreover, I should point out, 
which, without being a prophet, can be as readily 
foreseen as the impertinences of a hardheaded 
child. 

French clericals always interpret awry the kind- 
nesses shown them. Incapable of wishing liberty, 
cordially and sincerely, to those who think not as 
themselves, they judge other people by their own 
standards. As soon as any respect is shown to 
their ideas or any liberty granted to them, they 



68 AN OPEN LETTER 

fancy either insincerity or some mephistophelian 
scheme, or else they are needed or feared. They 
dream they are masters and power will again be 
in their hands. 

Such a frame of mind will once again produce 
its mental fruits. The very liberal answers given 
by a very large number of municipalities to the 
document known as the " Declaration of the 
Bishops " at once turned their heads. Even now 
(end of February, 1907) we hear of the referen- 
dum, of the plebiscite, of the communes in favor 
of the Church against the Government. The As- 
sumptionists, who purposely throw out these no- 
tices in the press, stand ready to influence the 
opinion of the whole world; perfectly well they 
know to what they must stick; they, too, are 
aware, thoroughly so, that sections, largely Prot- 
estant or radical-socialistic, will leave the place of 
worship to the Cures. At the same time, they re- 
gard themselves apt in swelling their tones and in 
imputing to liberalism and its deeds a meaning and 
a trend diametrically the opposite to that intended. 
So often and so well will they declare that these 
municipal acts constitute a protest against the 
Government's policy that they will force the com- 
munes to reconsider their first intentions. 

Finally, what they desire above all is the day 
when, driving the municipalities and the Govern- 
ment beyond patience, they will, by their schem- 
ings, force the closing of some churches, so that 
with some show of reason they may cry : Persecu- 
tion. In France their complaints are seldom taken 



TO CARDINAL GIBBONS 69 

seriously, but these great patriots hope that the 
tide of general reprobation will become strong 
enough to wipe out a detested government. 

Behold, Your Eminence, what measures of po- 
litical jobbery strangers endorse, very innocently, 
in fact, who, in the goodness of their hearts, rush 
too fast to the help of sufferers, whose heart break- 
ing cries have come to their ears. 

If the campaign so merrily carried on in the 
press against lay France should continue, it would 
not in the least change facts, so clear of themselves. 
But indeliberate movements of public opinion, 
above all in a land like yours, whose esteem is 
specially dear to France, would prove infinitely 
hurtful to Catholicism. For, in the long run, the 
responsibility would fall upon the Holy See, which 
follows these movements so attentively and so 
wistfully. The success of this Anti-French agita- 
tion would prove one thing only, viz. : that 
Catholicism, instead of being as its name indicates, 
a bond of sympathy between nations, excels, on the 
contrary, in creating among them misunderstand- 
ings and deplorable divisions. (26) 

Far off, indeed, is the day when our sister, Italy, 
thought that we were going to re-establish St. 
Peter's throne. More recently, the entente cordiale 
with England has found its opponents only among 
Catholics, whence with a sad bravery issued words 
which should have put to shame those who used 
them, if it were not clear to all that those knight- 
errants of French honor are irresponsible marion- 
nettes. 



70 AN OPEN LETTER 

The sentiment, Your Eminence, which has led 
me to take pen in hand is without doubt the wish 
that my country be not despised and judged 
wrongly. Another reason, also — and perhaps 
stronger — is the love of that venerable Mother 
Church, who owes so much to France and to which 
France owes so much. I believe in her transforma- 
tion, her reformation, her getting into line, because 
I believe in her life. Would that the error of 
them who confound the letter with the spirit 
standing still with truth, not lead her to desire the 
position of idols upraised in niches, whence the 
flow of humanity is looked down upon. That may 
be an apotheosis ; it is also death. 

Alongside the Catholics, of whom I have just 
spoken, there are others to whom we turn with a 
joyous confidence. For they love their times and 
their country, not with a supernatural, theological 
love, but as men after a human fashion. They have 
the faith, a faith that need not call an adversary 
a liar or a possessed. They dream not of killing, 
but of converting. 

They accept Catholic tradition that is as the 
Truth and the Life, for they bring themselves to 
realize the words of St. Augustine, which the 
Church makes use of in the office of Holy Thurs- 
day, at the twilight of the day when our thoughts 
turn to the Upper Room and Gethsemane, hailing 
and preparing for a Communion, of which the 
Cenacle was only the promise and the prophecy : 
" The most of the time when you fancy you are 



TO CARDINAL GIBBONS 71 

hating an enemy, you hate a brother and know it 
not." (27) 

If it were given you to see at first hand what 
is going on in France, you would need little time, 
Your Eminence, to perceive that our Democracy 
is entirely the opposite of being materialistic or 
self-satisfied. If to believe that truth is more in 
the future than in the past, that it continues and 
will still continue to be sought after, that it is not 
found once and for all (28), that every grain of 
it, which our ancestors discovered, increases the 
duty of further research, if all these sentiments 
make up a dangerous error, then France is lost. 

But if, on the other hand, such dreams, such 
aspirations from the soul even of the Faith, if it 
were the trend towards such sentiments that made 
the Law and the Prophets the forerunners of the 
Gospel; if it is their presence in the teaching of 
Jesus, which has made it not the truth of one age 
and one land but a force, the starting point of un- 
ending progress and expansion, then must we con- 
clude that France in spite of all her faults is on 
the right way. And much will be forgiven her be- 
cause she hath loved much. 

I cannot, however, end this letter, already too 
long, without saying a word upon a question 
which I have neither the skill nor the mission to 
put before you, but which as I know is deep in 
the hearts of some French bishops, and of those of 
the clergy, whose ideas are not enclosed with the 
lines so stiffly laid down by the daily press. (29) 



72 



AN OPEN LETTER 



If during these past months no authorized Cath- 
olic voice dare approach it publicly, it is really, 
I can assure you, because men dreaded to speak 
too feelingly and because also it was thought that 
any step on the part of the clergy of France might 
compromise the Holy See. It is the question of 
Episcopal nominations. Your voice, Your Emi- 
nence, is among those which have the right to 
make themselves heard. More than once you have 
not failed and we know that only lately you had 
the courage to undertake the cause of justice 
against the Canadian Episcopate and had the good 
fortune to gain your point.* 

Why would you not explain to the Supreme Au- 
thority the desire of French Catholics to see fixed 
the way of electing bishops ? 

Since the Supreme Pontiff, now presiding over 
the destinies of the Church, is moved by a special 
love for them, he could hardly show it better than 
in restoring the rules of Canon Law. And as you 
are so convinced that what is needful for the Cath- 
olics of France is liberty, like to that in the United 
States, will you then exert your influence to the 
end that the Holy See also enters into these views 
and grant to the Eldest Daughter of the Church 
not unusual privileges, but purely and simply the 
rights conceded to the Catholics of the New 
World? 



Pardon me. Your Eminence, for anything in this 



* Probably a reference to Cardinal Gibbons' defense of the Knights 
of Labor. — Translator. 



TO CARDINAL GIBBONS 73 

letter that may be contrary to forms, which in my 
ignorance I may have broken. I comfort myself 
a little in thinking that the illustrious Cardinal 
whom I ventured to address has himself in this 
point more than one fault upon his conscience. 
For he has been seen to arrive at the Vatican in a 
turnout which, if truly apostolic, did not fail, 
nevertheless, to cause a little excitement among 
the honorable officials of the Sacred Palace, so 
tenacious of olden customs. (30) 

Deign to accept. Your Eminence, the homage of 
my most respectful sentiments. 

Paul Sabatier. 



NOTES OF THE AUTHOR 



76 



NOTES. 

1 (page 35). Aprh la Separation, by Count 
d'Haussonville, of the French Academy and the 
Academy of Moral and Political Sciences. 12mo. 
94 pp. Paris, 1906. 

2 (page 35). For example, cf.. La Verite Fran- 
gaise, February 1st, 1906, a paper on " The Eternal 
Enemy." 

3 (page 36). La Revue Catholique des Eglises, 
February, 1907, makes it a duty to point out " this 
dictatorship of religion by laymen without author- 
ity or fitness, defending the Church against laicism, 
making themselves masters of orthodoxy, jealously 
monopolizing the interests of religion and almost 
succeeding in making their journalism regarded as 
the ordinary magisterium of the Church. 

4 (page 39). To have an exact notion of this 
speech, the Journal OMciel, of January 16th, which 
published it in extenso, should be read. Some 
clerical journals kept completely silent about it; 
others, v. g., Le Gaulois, were bold enough to boast 
of their silence. 

5 (page 40). Cf., Les Etudes, October 6th, 1906, 
p. 37. This is a well-known review of the Jesuits. 

6 (page 40). La Decouverte du Vieux Monde par 
un etudiant de Chicago, 12mo, pp. 320, 1906. This 
book of the Abbe Klein is not, in fact, the only 
one wherein can be found discreet and sensible 

77 



78 AN OPEN LETTER 

views on the present crisis. There still remain a 
few priests in France who understand well enough 
their environment to recognize the straightfor- 
wardness and good will of the men in the opposi- 
tion. Among the publications on the Separation, 
there is another — the work of a priest also — short, 
sharp, full of sincerity, manliness, and faith, worthy 
of being placed alongside of the illuminating 
speeches of M. Briand. I refer to the pamphlet 
Politique religieuse et Separation, by the Abbe Hem- 
mer, of the Diocese of Paris, 12mo, pp. 88, Paris, 
1905. 

7 (page 44). On Political Catholicism, Demain, 
November 3, 1905, p. 4. 

8 (page 47). Is it not strange that the most de- 
termined enemies of the Government saw not all 
these faults of the law? They decried it as tyran- 
nical and detestable, but as a whole in a vague, 
general way, because of its origin. They feared 
lest the Holy See might finally accept it, and 
they cared not to burn their bridges behind them. 
A tolerari posse was regarded as so certain, that on 
all sides under Episcopal direction and approba- 
tion. Catholic jurists studied beforehand the ques- 
tions which its application might raise, e. g.. Ex- 
pose de la Situation legale de VEglise Catholique en 
France d'apres la hi du ii decemhre, ipo§ (Its prop- 
erties, its clergy, its worship), by L. Jenouvrier, 
former President of the Bar Association of 
Rennes; Cardinal Laboure, Archbishop of Rennes, 
under date December 12th, 1905, wrote a letter of 
introduction to it. This was the time when most 



NOTES OF THE AUTHOR 79 

zealous clericals were explaining to good people 
that the law was radically bad, but that the Pope, 
by virtue of his apostolic office and in the fulness 
of his power (plenitudo potestatis) could heal it 
radically [sanare in radice]. Such zealots would 
be paid by Protestant controversialists not to ex- 
plain Infallibility more stupidly. For them, it lies 
not in the power which the Pope enjoys of de- 
fining, i. e., of declaring existing facts; it would 
rather imply a kind of creative power. Simple 
folks will find it hard to understand how a Pope, 
sweet and honest, made not over the law that 
healing sign of the Cross which it was in his 
power to do. 

9 (page 47). M. Briand himself, as reporter of 
the Commission, declares that the regular consti- 
tution of the associations for public worship would 
require a priest in communion with a bishop, who 
himself should be in communion with the Pope. 
The strong majority who voted for §4 embraced 
all the Catholic deputies of the Chamber. (Translator's 
italics.) 

10 (page 48). Appeal of a group of French Cath- 
olics to Pope Pius X. 32 pp. Nourry, Paris, 1906. 

11 (page 48). In taking these steps the Prelates 
thought they were in perfect accord with the in- 
structions of Pius X, who, in the Bull Gravissimo, 
August 10th, 1906, instructed the bishops to make 
use of all the means known to the Law in order to 
arrange and organize religious worships. So ex- 
plained to his clergy Cardinal Lecot, who added : 
This declaration being a mere official formality 



80 AN OPEN LETTER 

implies neither the renouncing of any right nor 
the interference of any outside influence on the 
exercise of worship, we see no reason of impor- 
tance to keep us from signing it. 

12 (page 48). The steps taken by these prelates 
would have been quickly followed by the other 
bishops and would have made for peace. To hold 
that Pius X wanted war absolutely would be to lay 
at his door a directness of intention against which 
he would be in the right to protest. But what is 
certain is that he sought not a peace — the outflow 
of the natural trend of our institutions. 

13 (page 49). Hateful press * * * ^j^^ ^^ 
must add lying. If it is hard for daily newspapers 
to shun a number of errors, owing to the swiftness 
of information, and if consequently a large indul- 
gence in this regard is due them, this, however, can- 
not be granted when it is question of deliberate 
falsehoods renewed day by day and which it is not 
possible in spite of the most striking proofs to 
have withdrawn. But these falsehoods being, if 
the expression is permissible, the weapons of their 
politics, they are become slaves to such which 
they never can shake off. I shall quote only two, 
to maintain which no fact can be alleged and yet 
accepted are they by certain organs as truths not 
needed to be proven. The first is that the law of 
Separation is the result of Protestant efforts; the 
second, that the Government would desire to favor 
foolish schismatic attempts. 

14 (page 53). Men, even of large and demo- 
cratic ideas, like the Abbe Naudet, were convinced 



NOTES OF THE AUTHOR 81 

that the freedom of Episcopal nominations would 
be impaired. 

" It is known already," he said in La Justice Sociale, 
November 11th, 1906, " that our rulers will not accept the 
direct and sole nominations of the Pope. Moreover, no 
one is ignorant what sense the word * separation * has 
in the mouths of these people. French law permits not 
a citizen to accept a function or even a decoration from 
a foreign ruler without official authorization. We may 
feel sure that the government, be it what it may, will not 
permit to lie idle this weapon yery dangerous for us. 
It can even go so far as to make impossible the use of 
the Episcopal office." 

These lines are noteworthy. They prove how 
little among the clergy a frank, loyal, liberal trial 
of Separation could be expected. But since at no 
time has the Government searched for any such 
weapon in its Law Codes, perhaps it would be fair 
to recognize this and be grateful for it. 

Again not only the clerical journals as a rule 
have given no thought to apologizing, but their 
tremendous blunders as to the Government's aims 
have taught them nothing, and day by day they 
begin to impute to it the darkest designs. Such 
steady relapses make the more praiseworthy the 
recent words of the Abbe Naudet : " The conduct 
and words of M. Briand are those of a man de- 
sirous of peace, peace in liberty " (Justice Sociale, 
February 23d, 1907), and the stand of the Abbe 
Darby, who in his Vie Catholique gave in full the 
speech of Minister of Public Worship (cf. specially 
the issue of November 17th, 1906). Should not, 



82 AN OPEN LETTER 

we trust, these views of priests long known to the 
Archbishop of Baltimore, and in whose works he 
is interested, have led him to desire to form a per- 
sonal opinion upon the events in France, based 
solely upon authentic documents? 

15 (page 54). Liberty, that is, on the part of the 
State. The Holy See, however, took care not to 
leave the French Episcopate to their own initia- 
tive; it fixed rigorously the order of the day and 
even reserved to itself the choice of the prelates 
who would make up the chief commissions. 

16 (page 55). This correctness and serenity cre- 
ate ways so removed from those of the clericals 
that they refuse to credit them and give out in 
their journals the most grotesque statements, e. g. : 
They announced seriously that the new bishops, on 
their way back from Rome, would be held up at the 
frontier. Their simple readers bubbled up with 
anger against our abominable and tyrannical Gov- 
ernment. When the bishops had all arrived safely 
in their respective dioceses without any let or hin- 
drance to the ovations gotten up in their honor, 
those people not even thought how atrociously 
they had been deceived by their pious journals. 
Not only the loyalty of the Government in this 
matter was not recognized, but calumny was the 
only thanks. 

17 (page 55). Finally, the persistent opponents of 
separation very loyally perceived that to make use 
of part of the law would render them its accomplices. 
They desired then that Catholics would look upon 
it as not existing, at least in this sense that they 



NOTES OF THE AUTHOR 83 

would not use the rights conferred by it and would 
keep from profiting from the advantages which it 
might bring to them. (cf. Count d'Haussonville : 
Apres la Separation, p. 20.) 

18 (page 55). The full text of this address was 
given in I'Osservatore Romano, August 14th, 1906. 
A Catholic journal, which as a rule adopts a less 
oratorical tone, could say : 

" This meeting in Paris is the grandest deed in our 
history since the Concordat. It marks the end of a 
system: the anarchy and powerlessness of a Church 
under the leading strings of the State. It is a resurrec- 
tion to life with liberty. Gratefully we salute it as the 
first step in that future of progress, of peace, and of 
order, for which we labor and which, in spite of the 
unhappy trials of the present hour, will dawn upon our 
country finally." {Bulletin de la Semaine, June 6, 1906, 
Paris.) 

Strangers, who wished to be posted upon the 
religious questions in France, might subscribe to 
it or to the excellent Demain, of Lyons. These two 
weeklies, both strictly Catholic, have an intel- 
lectual and moral standing which ranks them away 
and beyond the mass of religious papers. 

The few lines that I have taken from the Bulletin 
de la Semaine announce all right the enthusiasm 
with which those, whom I must term Catholics in 
contradistinction to the Catholic clericals, accepted 
the decisions of the first meeting of the bishops. 
Naturally they could hardly look forward to the 
strange lot that befell them at Rome. 

19 (page 57). The text appeared in le Figaro, 



84 AN OPEN LETTER 

March 26th, 1906, and the next day in a large num- 
ber of other papers. 

20 (page 58). cf., for example, the article, Rome 
et V Action liberale in Verite frangaiSj August 15th, 
1906. 

21 (page 61). At Christmastide, 1906, Mgr. An- 
drieu, bishop of Marseilles, delivered in his cathe- 
dral a discourse that has been scattered all over 
France, and whose ending la Croix, January 9th, 
1907, resumes thus : The principles of the Revolution 
have ruined France; she will only become great, 
strong, and happy by returning to the principles of 
the Gospels. 

22 (page 63). These expressions may seem se- 
vere to the general public. But do they appear 
unjust to those who know what sufferings can be 
cloaked under the threats : To dismiss in disgrace, 
to cast out to starve f 

Some clerical heads adopt methods which no 
government would dare use. In the year of grace, 
1906, Cardinal Ferrata, acting as prefect of the 
Congregation of Bishops and Regulars, declared 
that permission to say Mass can be given to Father 
Tyrrell only when he pledges himself to write no 
longer upon religious questions and to submit be- 
forehand all his correspondence for the approbation 
of a censor, named by the ordinary. 

23 (page 65) . Is it not a sign of the times, this 
joining of the two terms. Free Thought and Re- 
ligion, which many look upon as contradictions? 
These last days in Paris, specially in the Latin 



NOTES OF THE AUTHOR 85 

Quarter, have been pasted up bills with the head- 
line, " Movement of Religious Free Thought." 
Three contradictory conferences of M. J. J. Kas- 
par have been presided over in turn by MM. Paul 
Guieysse and de Pressense, members of Parlia- 
ment, and M. Gabriel Seailles, Professor at the 
Sorbonne. 

24 (page 66). Here I speak only of the daily press. 
Thanks to Demain and the Bulletin de la Semaine, 
quoted above, the weekly press is already in touch 
with the new spirit, which, — we may add, — is tri- 
umphant in the reviews. Doubtlessly these last 
are but partially imbued with it, but almost all 
make a good impression willing-nilling. Surely the 
difference between the daily and monthly press is 
very evident. For the writings in the daily press 
a strong conviction answers, while articles of 
greater pretensions in a review compel their au- 
thors to delve deep into questions, to weigh the 
opposing views and to search out the sources. It 
is an intelligent, lively, and, above all, expanding 
work. 

Twenty years ago, French Catholicism had noth- 
ing like the publications of to-day, e. g., Le Bulletin 
de rinstitut catholique de Toulouse, Revue d'Histoire et 
de Litter ature, Annales de Philosophie chretienne, 
Revue du Clerge frangais, Revue Biblique, Quinsaine, 
Revue Catholique des Eglises. All these magazines — 
and the list might be made much longer — are per- 
fectly orthodox. That which, however, marks 
them off from their predecessors or rivals is the de- 



86 AN OPEN LETTER 

sire to accomplish apostolic work in intellectual 
centres. The men who direct them realize the 
day upon which the Church will no longer convert 
the savages she will not have lost all her useful- 
ness though she may run the risk of becoming 
an article of export to the colonies. 

25 (page 67). Well, I know that these revela- 
tions have been denied ; it is but right to ask what 
notion of honesty do these people form to them- 
selves, who cast noisily in one's face a denial, only 
to yield a moment later in detail everything they 
had defended as a whole beforehand. 

Unable to probe to the bottom this matter here, 
it will be enough to say to those for whom the 
word of truth has an exact meaning that La Croix 
opened its issue of January 30th, 1907, with these 
words : 

We have official announcement of a docu- 
ment OF capital importance. 

It then gave the document known as : Decla- 
ration OF the Bishops of France, followed 
by the signatures of 87 Prelates. The same 
day, L'Univers published the same document. 
Now, we dare affirm that neither the staff of these 
journals nor any one else in the world has seen 
the original with the names of the bishops affixed 
to it. 

Moreover, one of the leading clerical papers — ^I 
note this with pleasure — had the frankness to state 
that the text published by VOsservatore Romano, 
January 31st, 1907, differed in two points of the 



NOTES OF THE AUTHOR 87 

highest importance from the so-called authentic 
text of La Croix and L'Univers. It added: 

"What must we think of the alleged signatures of 80 
bishops of France published by La Croix and L'Univers 
at the bottom of a text, which the greatest part of the 
bishops of France know not as yet in its rigorous and 
full details and which consequently they could not have 
received officially." Extract from the Nouvelliste de Lyon, 
February 18th, 1907, article entitled "An Aid to the 
History of the Church of France." 

26 (page 69). Strange, the French journals 
which publish to-day with most pleasure the pro- 
tests of strangers are the very ones which, a few 
years ago, looked upon the sentiment which showed 
itself everywhere in favor of revising the Dreyfus 
process as an argument against such revision. 

27 (page 71). ^Plerumque cum tibi videris odisse 
inimicum fratem odisti et nescis [St. Aug. Tract, Ps. 
54. Fifth Lesson of the Tenebrae of Holy Thurs- 
day.] 

28 (page 71). In fact, this is the drift, found in 
all current thought from " La Libre Pensee Reli- 
gieuse," started in Paris, down to the anarchists' 
publications. Here is a very pointed statement of 
Jean Marestan in UEre Nouvelle: 

" One thing I detest above all is the regulated or 
instinctive intolerance against everything which thinks 
not or acts not like itself. A false idea on a sincere man's 
part, who stands ready to yield to truth when it offers 
itself, appears to me less evil than a true idea which 
hardens into dogmatism and requires the hounding of 
others for its own maintenance." (March, 1904, quoted 
by La Croix, p. 112, 1905.) 



88 AN OPEN LETTER 

29 (page 71). The pages entirely just and note- 
worthy that the Abbe Hemmer {Politique Religieuse 
et Separation,^. 73 ^.),2Lnd the Abbe Klein (Demain, 
February 23d, 1906), have devoted to this matter 
prove how it appears to thoughtful and clear- 
sighted men. 

30 (page 73). Le Peuple Frangais, edited, as is 
well known, by the Abbe Garnier (member of Par- 
liament — ^Translator) , relates in its number of Feb- 
ruary 9th, 1907, a good story, which I often heard 
upon the banks of the Tiber, apropos of the first 
visit to Rome made by Mgr. Gibbons, after receiv- 
ing the Red Hat. Little up to the etiquette of his 
new princely office, the Archbishop of Baltimore, on 
the day following his arrival, came on foot to the 
Vatican to pay his respects to the Pope. Fancy 
the scandal and how it was told him that in Rome 
a Cardinal should only venture out in a carriage. 
Taking it in good part. His Eminence promised to 
do better and, in fact, next time rode up in a cab 
to the Vatican gates. With a sadder air than on 
the first occasion he was told that a Cardinal 
should come in a two-horse carriage. The third 
time he used the street cars. 



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